Abstract
Background: Equity, inclusion, diversity, and anti-racism (EIDAR) are goals for many organizations. However, not all have the human resources to devote the time and effort into this work. There is a wide spectrum of human and financial resources in our communities dedicated to equity – on one end there are dedicated equity teams and on the other end people are doing their full-time jobs and writing policies. This often leaves some organizations far behind in developing and executing EIDAR goals. Marginalized populations are also feeling fatigued with each organization separately engaging, with little to no impact noticed after each engagement. The EIDAR collaborative seeks to provide opportunity for knowledge exchange and to coordinate engagement for maximum output.
Objective: The EIDAR Collaborative is a platform for Middlesex London partners to work together to improve the service delivery in the social and health care environments across our community. By sharing and coordinating engagement and improvement efforts, we aim to go further faster on our shared EDI journey. Working groups have been developed to address specific EIDAR goals, with the intention of sharing their work with the greater group to facilitate that knowledge exchange. Another objective is to coordinate community engagement and where possible share the data collected at these engagements to allow for each organization to benefit from this knowledge to impact policy and change.
Highlights: This collaborative is in its early days, with two meetings. Using a collective impact approach we invited a diverse group of community members to our first meeting. Our meeting was in person and had 60 attendees representing directors to front-line staff to people with lived experience. Organizations joined from the private, public, health, social and educational sectors. This diverse background brought unique perspectives and experiences that impacted the outcomes. Data was collected through this meeting and options were created from this data to dive deeper into specific goals/strategies. At our second meeting members were invited to join working groups to work toward these goals/strategies. To date we have six collaborative working groups:
1.Enabling Digital Literacy
2.Access to Interpretation services
3.Policy, Human Resources and Education
4.EIDAR Framework review
5.Sociodemographic collection
6.Indigenous Partnerships
Conclusion: We are all stretched thin, all working at or past our capacity. Sharing this workload across sectors, and harnessing our collective experiences, gives us the opportunity to make bigger system change. When we as a community move forward together, bringing those that have limited resources with us – our community as a whole can benefit. We recognize that each sector, each agency, and everyone bring unique perspectives and value to the table. The EIDAR Collaborative brings us together and gives us the opportunity to do this work together.